


It's hard to know they're out there (it's hard to know that you still care)

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Angst and Feels, Canonical Character Death, Dimension Travel, F/F, Post-Canon, Rachel isn't canon Rachel, she's still a Rachel tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 07:40:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18734602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: Rachel is a normal woman who spends her days teaching gymnastics to Andalite morphers and Yeerk nothlits. Then one day she gets summoned to a government base where she meets a version of her best friend from a universe where they apparently fought in a guerilla squad together.Cassie, meanwhile, is unsure how to feel about the opportunity to see a friend who's now dead... a friend she was in love with.





	It's hard to know they're out there (it's hard to know that you still care)

When Rachel Berenson is summoned to an interspecies diplomatic base, the first thing she thinks is that one of her students has gotten in trouble. She teaches gymnastics, special classes for human nothlits who used to be Yeerks or some other species, as well as Andalites learning how to use human morphs, sort of a body awareness type thing. Other than that there aren’t a lot of extraterrestrials she knows that well. So she figures it’s got to be that. But then, she thinks, it might be Jake. Jake’s military, and even if he doesn’t work with extraterrestrials directly, he could easily get involved. She hopes it’s not Jake though. Summonings with this little detail seem like they’re bound to be bad news.

But as it turns out, it’s nothing to do with any of her students or Jake. Instead, she’s led past seventeen tiers of security and brought eight floors below ground to what looks a lot like an interrogation room, and in the interrogation room is an even more familiar face.

“Cassie?”

The woman looks at Rachel with the most carefully composed face Rachel has ever seen on her—possibly on anyone. It is Cassie, of course. Rachel knows her too well to be mistaken. But she looks thinner than when Rachel saw her last, and her hair is cut shorter, and her clothes… they’re more like the official gear of the agents who led Rachel in here than any of Cassie’s usual, dorky, tree-hugger fashion.

“Rachel,” Cassie says. Her voice quivers. “Hi. It’s nice to see you. Uh, I might not be who you think I am. Actually,” she says with an awkward smile, “I’m definitely not.”

There’s an Andalite agent still in the room, standing by the door, and he says, cutting introductions short, <Warrior Cassie is from another dimension adjacent to ours. Our dimensions cooperated to send her here. She has been here for several days, and requested to see you.>

Rachel blinks.

“Hi,” Cassie says again. “Rachel.”

“Another dimension? You’ve gotta be kidding.” Then again, she didn’t used to believe in aliens, and all Earth now knows the world is weirder than the thought.

“Yeah, I know, it’s pretty crazy.” Cassie stares at Rachel. She no longer looks so impassive. She smiles slightly. “I guess your life is pretty normal…”

Her voice breaks. Abruptly she stands and turns to the Andalite agent. “Excuse me. I need a moment.” And she hurries out.

Rachel looks at the Andalite, and the Andalite looks back. <Apparently,> the Andalite says, <you are someone very important to her. She insisted on seeing you as part of our negotiations. You should be honored; she is a brave warrior to have traveled through such danger to come here.>

“She’s my friend. I guess my cousin-in-law,” Rachel says. An environmentalist. Sometimes she does collaborate with aliens for scientific purposes, but mostly very normal. And she knows “Warrior” is just an Andalite rank but it doesn’t fit—Cassie’s very pacifist and, and, well again, normal. How’d she end up traveling between dimensions?

<A good friend to have,> the Andalite says.

It’s not like Rachel disagrees with that, but it’s still very weird. Massively weird.

Other-Dimension Cassie better explain everything. Rachel is hoping for an interesting story. And she feels a little cocky that she was the one Cassie asked to come here, not Jake—she never gets the good gossip

* * *

 

When Cassie returns, more composed, she sits back down in her chair (rickety metal—for a diplomatic base, this place is cheap as hell) and asks Rachel what her life is like.

“Okay, no. My life is extremely normal. Honestly too normal. Yours clearly isn’t. How did my pacifist environmentalist cousin end up traveling between dimensions?”

“Long story. From what I can tell, our dimensions are pretty different.”

“No duh. Tell me something I don’t know. Like how you ended up becoming a Warrior—that isn’t even a human military rank!”

“I’ve never been part of the American military,” Cassie says. “Not the Andalite military either, though. It’s an honorary rank. Like Jake was technically a war prince, but he never used the title.”

“What.”

Cassie steeples her fingers. “Well, to put it briefly, we were part of a guerilla squad fighting the Yeerks back when we were teenagers. On our planet the Andalites didn’t interfere as early, so we were an important part of the human resistance. Since then people think I’m an expert on a lot of things, and I got called in to experiment with interdimensional travel because I was considered a good human representative. Capiche?”

Rachel blinks.

She really wants some expansion on all of this. A guerilla fighting squad? Humans had done little to fight the Yeerks off Earth, at least on the Earth she belongs to—most of the war was fought by the Andalites. She wants details. But she also doesn’t want to be insensitive. Cassie talks casually, but she also seems a little tense. Like she wants Rachel to act like the insane things she’s saying are just normal.

It makes her think of Tom. After they got the Yeerk out of him, he wasn’t himself. Or rather he was himself, for the first time in a long time, and he didn’t quite know what to do with it. He wanted to be the person he used to be, but the world wasn’t what it used to be, and no one could go back. But he acted like having been possessed by a Yeerk was normal, a bad thing but normal. And in this new world it kind of was.

He doesn’t talk about that time very much these days. When he does, he plays it off casual. Like Cassie’s doing now.

Rachel sighs. “…capiche, I guess? That’s pretty cool that they chose you for that kind of experiment.” It also sounds super dangerous, but hey, Cassie made it through, so Rachel’s going to ignore that for now.

“Yeah, it’s a great honor.” Now she sounds like the Andalite. “It’s amazing to get to see an entirely different universe. But seriously. What is your life like here?”

Rachel tells her about the classes she teaches, some of her promising students. That she’s pretty close with her and Jake and Tom, but they live in different cities these days so they don’t always see each other that often. That she’s eternally, hopelessly single.

“You didn’t marry Tobias?”

“Tobias—Tobias Fangor? Oh, I dated him for like a month in high school, but, yeah. That didn’t really work out. Nice guy, though. What, is that who I married where you’re from?” Maybe she should get back in touch.

“Uh… no. You never got married. But you and Tobias were kind of a thing. He was in the Animorphs too. That’s what we called ourselves, the Animorphs.”

“So I was in your guerilla squad too?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we were in it together. You, me, Jake, Marco, Tobias, Ax… I don’t know if you know Ax.”

Rachel feels a bit miffed that Cassie was chosen to travel between dimensions when Rachel was apparently also in this squad, but then again, she shouldn’t be jealous. And there are probably a lot of factors involved she doesn’t know about. Also, damn. She was in a guerilla squad. Scratch that, teenage Rachel was in a guerilla squad.

Teenage Rachel was such an edgelord sometimes. It sounds like something she would have been up for. But damn. There have been times she’s wanted to kill people, like when she heard Tom had been infested for so many years, and saw the trauma he had afterwards. But she’s never actually done it.

Alternate dimension Rachel must be a very different person. This Cassie must be too. Rachel studies her, then flashes a smile when Cassie looks inquisitive. “So me and Tobias were an action couple?”

“More like Romeo and Juliet.”

“That does sound like us.”

“He’s a hawk nothlit. It was difficult for the two of you. But you mostly made it work.”

“Wow.” Tobias had a hard enough life already. But of course in another universe he’d get stuck with more shit. Poor guy. “Damn. Sounds pretty crazy.”

A moment of silence.

“How about you and Jake? You’re still married over there, right?” If they’d been in the squad together.

“No. Things didn’t really work out that way.”

Rachel just keeps stepping on mines—Cassie’s expression is not at all happy. Better not talk about their married life here. She cleared her throat. “Well, uh… yeah, I haven’t talked to Tobias in ages. We kind of stayed friends for a while, but I haven’t seen him since college.”

“Do you think he’d see me, if I asked?”

<We can summon anyone you want,> the Andalite agent says politely.

“Thanks,” Cassie says, “but I don’t want to bother him if he doesn’t know me in this world.”

Rachel shrugs. “I don’t know. You two never really knew each other that well. But I guess you could see him.” Weirdly, part of her feels jealous that this Cassie would want to see Tobias as much as her. Those two were never friends, and Rachel and Cassie were best friends. Though they aren’t so much anymore, with the distance and with Jake, who gets in the way somehow. But they used to be. Cassie and Tobias… She shakes off the jealousy but feels relieved when Cassie reluctantly says that in that case she probably won’t bother him.

* * *

 

They kick her out eventually. Cassie has to stay on base, and Rachel has to go home. The agent says she can come back and visit “some time later”, probably, not making any promises or setting any dates. Rachel argues with them and they argue back, and she eventually gives up. She feels defeated.

She doesn’t really know this Cassie, but leaving her is still hard. She loves Cassie, any Cassie, and this Cassie is not so unfamiliar. She has the same peace as Rachel’s Cassie, but there is a sense of melancholy behind it. Rachel didn’t ask about the specifics of her past in the guerilla squad, but she can imagine how it must have been, fighting the Yeerks. A lonely battle. All the people she named on her side were teenagers at the time; Rachel knows the kind of paranoia there was back then, when they first realized they had been invaded, and knows Cassie must not have been able to trust anyone else.

At least I was there for her, she thinks. But Cassie is still melancholy, and Rachel knows that nothing the other version of her did could have been enough to protect her.

She drives home, goes into her apartment, locks up. When she goes into the kitchen, Cassie is there waiting for her. Other dimension Cassie.

She stumbles backwards in surprise. “You—”

“I felt like they cut us off,” Cassie says. “Besides, you can’t really talk with an agent watching you. All kinds of things you can’t say.”

Rachel is caught between wariness—Cassie followed her back here, and how did she do that when she wasn’t supposed to leave the base?—and a weird feeling of euphoria. This is how it’s supposed to be between them; they used to spend all day together, and when they went home sometimes they’d sneak out to visit each other or call each other up on the phone. She used to feel like half of herself was in Cassie, and only feel alive when Cassie was around. It’s a unique feeling; she’s never felt that way about anyone else.

It wore off her own Cassie. This Cassie gets it; Rachel knows she shouldn’t trust her (you can’t trust anyone these days), knows it’s pretty skeevy that she followed her home and snuck into the apartment, but can’t help laughing. It’s like she’s back in high school again.

“Stick it to the man,” she says, “nice job getting out of there. How’d you do it?”

“Morphed a fly. Don’t worry, I made sure my room had no cameras first. They shouldn’t notice I’m gone for a while. If they do, I won’t let you get in trouble.”

“Psh. Don’t worry about that.” Actually it’s kind of a relief.  But at the very thought of Cassie protecting her, she’s suddenly ready to fight anybody or anything. “Who cares what a bunch of Andalites think? Want me to make dinner? I can make it vegetarian.”

“No need. Make whatever you want.”

Cassie hovers behind her as she cooks up some stir fry. Despite Cassie’s disclaimer, she’s using tofu instead of chicken—her usual Cassie is a vegetarian, so Rachel’s learned some stuff. She puts in a lot of soy sauce.

“Rachel,” Cassie says, only a foot or so behind, “I need to tell you something.”

“What, Cassie?”

“I love you.”

It’s a declaration that fits the drama of the day. But it sparks in the air, wrecking all of Rachel’s nostalgia. High school Cassie or modern Cassie, neither would say something like that to Rachel, at least not in that voice. Thick with regrets and yet so sincere it hurts to hear her.

“I love you too.”

“I never told you,” Cassie says. “The other version of you. I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t put this on you.”

And it does hurt, hearing Cassie talk like this, but Rachel wants more. “Put anything on me you like.”

“I loved you in a—not in a friendship way. Not that we weren’t friends, because we were, but I always wanted more. I wanted to kiss you and touch you and be the person who mattered the most in the world to you. Even though with the world on the verge of ending all around us, it wasn’t like it was really important. But I couldn’t help it. But I didn’t say anything, and now I can’t. You’re gone.”

“What, did I marry Tobias Fangor?”

Cassie says bluntly, “You died.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Cassie lets out a little laugh.

“Sorry.”

“No, what are you sorry about?”

“Seems like a shitty thing, dying on you like that.”

“It was heroic. You were very heroic. I miss you so much.”

Rachel kisses her. It seems like the thing to do.

* * *

 

After dinner they end up in Rachel’s bed, intertwined under a sheet and a cheap polyester throw. It’s a hot day, but Rachel's air conditioner makes it cold inside constantly. Cassie reaches into Rachel’s pants without even pulling them down, feels down through Rachel’s bush and somehow locates her clit by touch. She moves her fingers up and down, up and down, sometimes fast and sometimes slow. Rachel is aroused. She presses into the touch, and grips at Cassie’s back, the smooth fabric of her dimensional-traveler uniform. Her mouth is pressed against Cassie’s neck, and in her excitement she can’t help but bite.

She tries to pull Cassie’s pants down and reciprocate, but Cassie keeps on distracting her. It’s hard to think about anyone else when you’re this on edge. On edge is the way to put it—she’s always a breath away from peaking, and then Cassie will slow down again, and then speed up, and it’s driving her completely crazy.

By the time Cassie even pauses, she’s exhausted. But she does finally pull Cassie’s pants down and feel her wetness. Cassie lets out a little moan, and she feels a twinge of satisfaction in her gut. Yeah, she can do this. She’s not an interdimensional traveler but there are still some things she can manage all right.

* * *

 

“Take me back with you,” Rachel murmurs.

“Interdimensional physics isn’t like air travel, Rachel. You can’t just buy a ticket.”

“So? We can figure it out.” She squeezes Cassie. “You should take me back with you. I want to see another universe.”

“It’s a lot like yours. Just more fucked up.”

“You’re underselling it because you don’t want me to want to go.”

Cassie shrugs, and snuggles back against her. “You’re being ridiculous.” But her voice is fond.

“Your existence is ridiculous. This whole world is ridiculous.”

“You have Jake here, and your Cassie. And Marco. Maybe not Tobias, but… you have a job, a normal life. It’s everything I could have wanted for you.”

“Except you,” Rachel says.

“You have me.”

“Not like this.”

“That’s not a reason to jump dimensions, Rachel.” She squeezes Rachel’s arm. “You’re sweet, though. You’re so weirdly innocent. It’s like, you’re not like her at all in some ways, but you’re exactly her in others.”

And now Rachel is feeling jealous of her own self; worse, of a version of herself who’s dead and can’t possibly compete. She’s being stupid. This isn’t even her own Cassie, this is… well, honestly, this woman is as much an alien as any Andalite, she’s not even from this version of reality. She’s the equivalent of a fictional character. But she’s in Rachel’s arms and she smells good and she feels good and even if today has been intensely weird, Rachel likes this.

“Then you should stay here,” she says. “Stay with me.”

“Let’s talk about it when we’re more awake,” Cassie says. Her voice means no. But Rachel thinks maybe she can talk her into it. She’s always been able to talk Cassie into things. And even if this isn’t really her Cassie, she knows how she ticks. She’s already formulated three plans by the time she falls asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm completely unsure whether Cassie and Rachel are OOC in this, but I think Rachel would be a really different person without the war anyway, so... oh well? Anyways, lots of angst.  
> The title is from the song "Dead Hearts" by Stars, bc I love obnoxiously long titles lately. I was vibing with that song's mood but also a little with "Jenny" by the Studio Killers. So, good songs.


End file.
